Roots

In the next few times, I must talk about something unpleasant and gloomy. Please be prepared for it. It’s actually a part of the theme “International Development”, even if it looks no relation at a glance. To understand this theme, it’s better for you to know the 3 things: politics, economy, and history, about which I’ll talk little by little. And everything has “cause” or “reason” behind it, and History always gives us clues and hints for the cause and reason. Thus I’d like to focus on history of Africa. In sum, to understand International Development, firstly you must know history of Africa.

When I was student, to tell you the truth, I didn’t study much because I was not interested in academic matters. Yet I encountered with a book called “The History of Black American” in a lecture at university, which attracted me to African Americans. I was so surprised, so shocked and so puzzled that I read more books written by black Americans and watched movies on “segregation” in the United States. According to a dictionary, the word “Segregation” seems to be specially used to describe “discrimination on black people in America”. But why can people become so cruel, aloof, brutal, barbarous and savage to other people? How come can you be aggressive, arrogant, violent, destructive and hostile to other group of peoples? Why can’t people be peaceful with others? It is uncomprehensive for me because there is no such history in Japan. In “the Seventeen-articleconstitution” promulgated back in 604, Prince Shotoku already said “We are all Harmonized!” Traditionally discrimination, racism, intolerance to other culture doesn’t root in the soil of Japan.

And when I went to Vietnam, I visited the War Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, and I got really shocked again by a gloomy picture printed on a brochure of the museum. In the Vietnam War, a lot of Vietnamese people are killed so easily by American soldiers like insects or animals, and on the picture I saw American soldiers “smiling” next to freshly severed heads of Vietnamese in line. Even the Americans enjoyed insulting Vietnamese after killing them brutally. There was no respect for life at all; it’s not a human act. This mentality is clearly described in the book: People Of The Lie, by Scott Peck, a man says: “Shooting up some Gooks might be kind of fun.” (p.229) The word “Gook” means Asian and here it means Vietnamese. They don’t feel anything to kill Asians, rather “fun” for them. So how could American soldiers be so brutal and barbarous? There is a “Roots” for everything. 

Today the America is considered as a country of white people, but it was the land of Native Americans. Europeans came to the American continent and killed, believe it or not, 95% of native people (this should be memorized and taught as “Genocide” in history books if the Holocaust by the Nazi is genocide). And they robbed the land and arrogantly insist “This is my homeland”, as if there was no such a cruel history. Based on this Roots, Slavery was introduced to that society and this cruel mentality was inherited and passed to American soldiers like the man above described.

Let me introduce a book: “Roots:The Saga of an American Family” by Alex Haley. Actually I watched TV miniseries of it on videos when I was student. The author is a 7^th generation descendant of Kunta Kinte who was captured by “white people” in a forest of Gambia, West Africa, and became a slave in America. He patiently searched for his roots and finally discovered the ancestor in the village of Juffure after 10 years. In this TV miniseries, you can see how cruelly black people were treated by “white people” in the history of the United States of America, which could be rather milder than real slavery. Without knowing your own Roots, you can’t understand yourself.